Positioning Libertarian Ethics By Philosophical School

  1. CLASSICAL “PSYCHOLOGICAL” (Smith,Hume,Locke,Burke)(BHL’s)

  2. GHETTO COSMOPOLITAN (Rothbard),

  3. CONTINENTAL RATIONAL (Hoppe),

  4. ANGLO ANALYTIC (Doolitte),

I keep intuitively wanting to classify the Bleeding Heart Libertarians led by Matt Zwolinski as right-continental rationals, but it’s pretty clear if you go through the past two years of articles on BHL, that their arguments are consistent with the classical psychological while borrowing arguments from everyone else where helpful.

I pretty much agree with the BHL’s sentiments. But formal institutions that depend on psychological (and normative) moral intuition and belief, cannot possibly survive postmodern, obscurant, and pseudoscientific propaganda.

Worse, they cannot survive the dissolution of the nuclear family. And it’s the nuclear family, or the Absolute Nuclear Family of the anglo tradition that is the primary source of our anglo american moral code. And in a world where immigrants no longer practice that family structure, where single mothers produce 40% of the population, and where ‘alternative marriages’ and ready divorce undermine the institution of the nuclear family, the moral intuitions upon which the Psychological School depends are statistically irrelevant.

The family structure is the constructor of moral intuitions which merely direct and modify genetic and gender driven differences in moral sensitivity. Period. Conservatives were correct about the family and norms and we were not. In a democratic polity, where the majority can implement policy, the family structure of the majority will determine morality. And since morality determines property rights, no such property rights can exist within a democracy.

We are in our current crisis because the American founders did not grasp the necessity and utility of the principle of calculability (no did any one until Weber). Had they for example, required original intent, and strict construction, and placed explicit authority in the common law, our world might be a very different place. At that time, given the state of science, and the prevalence of religious and poetic phrasing, it was impossible for them to grasp the concept of operational language as a necessary structure of all calculable statements.

The BHL’s are not able to innovate per se, because they have no calculable and rational argumentative structure to rely upon. And so their arguments are victim to the moral predisposition their audience. But instead they are positioning libertarian arguments through sympathetic psychological contrasts and advocacy. Which is excellent marketing. And given the damage done by Rothbard’s morally reprehensible parasitic Ghetto Ethics to the cause of liberty, we certainly need good marketing.

Propertarianism is not morally loaded. It’s analytic and calculable. In propertarian ethics I’ve placed the formal requirement for operational language. For that reason it isn’t morally aspirational – like most scientific argument it’s a little unsatisfying to reduce all human behavior to it’s physical properties – but it’s factually moral and defensible by science and reason. Whereas the Psychological model may advocate the correct ideas but they are not argumentatively powerful unless one is predisposed to agree with them. As such they are not arguments, but statements of confirmation bias.

I have tried to provide the BHL’s with a Propertarian argument for redistribution. My argument requires full calculability from start to finish. And it fully warrants, justifies, explains in causal terms, why direct redistribution to consumers is necessary compensation mandated by respect for property rights.

My criticism of the BHL’s to date has been limited (as my autistic arguments often are) to the fact that they are not contributing to innovation in libertarian theory, only to libertarian propaganda. Because I don’t disagree with their sentiments. I disagree with their Psychological School arguments.

My hope is that at some point they will grasp that the formal logic of property is sufficient to justify their psychologically argued, and morally intuited ends. And they can back their good marketing with good science, reason, and institutional solutions that are calculable and therefore impervious to the multitudinous forms of fraud that are used by the obscurantist left both socialist, Postmodern, Feminist and whatever else they manage to invent.

Property under Propertarianism is a scientifically moral, not rationally moral, or psychologically moral construct.

Curt Doolittle

The Propertarian Institute

Kiev